Mobile phones that use an iOS-based operating system are popular and widespread. Some popular applications that run on iOS allow customers to access high-density content services, such as movies, from remote servers. Many of these services are restricted to subscribing customers, such as Sprint TV. These high-density video products may benefit from a large bandwidth to transfer to a mobile device for viewing, and thus a Wi-Fi connection is often preferable to using the cellular network.
Some applications, such as those for subscribed high-density content, prefer that the customer be identified prior to delivery of content, to make sure they are a subscribing customer in good standing. Not helping with this, there is no function available to application developers to access the phone number of an iOS-based phone. This makes automatically identifying the user of the mobile phone by the application more difficult. One prior solution is to request the customer to type in a login, such as an ID and a password, before they can access the content each time. Forcing customers to remember one more set of login credentials is a problem for customers, who typically already have a large number of login credentials to remember for several other application-based services. Customers can also find the process tedious and time consuming.